Sometimes I really miss people that I make up in my head. I'm not the kind of person that easily becomes attached to others. It takes me a long while to become truly comfortable with someone. And because I don't become close quickly or easily, I don't often miss people when they're not around.

But sometimes, when my mind is wandering, which it often does when I find myself not watching it carefully, I come across the strangest people. They reoccur in my dreams. I know that they're not real. Simply characters my mind's made up. A lot of the times they don't necessarily have faces. They have lives and traits and adventures and secrets, but hardly ever do they have a face. Some have names and others don't. Its a silly way that I amuse myself when anything else fails to hold my attention.

Theres a man that explores jungles

A girl that knows everything there is to know about bees

There is a well mannered lion that reads at the breakfast table

There is an old couple that fell in love when they were young and then were separated for a long time but never forgot each other

There is a girl named Angela. She's a very corporate type. Wears high heels to work.

There are two little boys that I once saw in a pizza commercial, and sometimes I think about having pizza with them.

Robert always wears a blue shirt and dark jeans and has dark hair but no face. He likes parks. He'll sit in a park all day long watching people ride by on their bicycles. They always look as though they have no obligations, cares or worries. Free. That is the way he sees them. His favorite sound is the sound that the bells on their bicycles make. Sometimes he thinks about getting a bike, but he never does. Instead he sits on a bench and watches them. Sometimes he gets up and walks back and forth, in front of the bench. And sometimes when I fall asleep, I dream that I am at his park and he gets up and meets me and we watch them bike together.

These people, unlike the real living breathing ones that I forget to call or don't think of when they're away, these made up imaginary people that I invent to entertain myself, I end up missing because I know that they're not real. I'm sure someone would think they're my subconscious telling me something. Whether or not that be true, they really are nice people.

Dangerous Waters

In this ongoing process of growing up something that is becoming increasingly more important to me, increasingly more admirable to me, is when a person is able to hold true to their convictions.

People change their hair cuts, their favorite bands, change to decaf instead of caffeinated, from one line of work to another, they change their cliques, their habits, their minds. We are forever changed and shaped by the events and people in our lives, and because these changes are constant motions in life its difficult to say when we stop being who we were when we changed into who we are.

At different points in time we all have said things that we had believed to be true. We have all said things that we had believed we believed in. But as we change, so do our beliefs. Ideals that we had once stood so steadfastly behind, now lay abandoned and forgotten.

Believing in something is important, I think. I don't necessarily mean beliefs in any particular religion. Worship or don't worship whatever deity of your choosing, it makes no difference to me. But believing in something strongly, anything strongly, gives you a sense of self, and that is crucial. It is crucial to have something concrete that at the end of they day you can turn over in your mind,and reassure yourself that you are the person that you want to be because of it. It is crucial to have something that you can put your faith in, so that you know that the person you go to bed at night as, is the same one that you wake up as in the morning.

Having something that you can believe in gives you a moral code to live by, it gives you a sense of right and wrong, a sense of direction. Far too many of us live our lives in indifference. Think something. Have some kind of opinion about something. If we live indifferently we have no hope of progress. So many people complain about the state of things, of the economy, of the environment, "where's the neighborhood going", etc.

We're not going anywhere. We're not going anywhere because no body cares. We change too often and too quickly to devote enough of ourselves to any idea, and without any idea we have nothing to create, or contribute. We're forever floundering because we're too lazy to form a conclusive opinion of our own.

I remember one time a class I was in debated about The Ship of Theseus, a ship that eventually had every piece of it replaced so that there wasn't a single piece of the original ship that remained. Is it the same ship or a different ship all together?

People are the same way. On the surface we're always changing. I think though however, that if you hold true to your convictions, whatever they may be, some small piece of you will still be with you when you wake up in the morning. You can pick the best part of yourself, the part of yourself that you want to stand behind, and you can believe in it, hold on to it, live by it, and that part of you will be sure to wake up in the morning just the same as it was when you went to bed.

I think that its tragic when a person no longer recognizes who they are because they've grown too far apart from who they were.

I think those who put faith into an idea and live by it are stronger than those that don't believe in anything.

And I think that remaining true to yourself and what you believe in is possibly one of the most difficult things to do. I admire those that can embrace the changes and the challenges they are being faced with, and I wish them luck.

Forever Is An Awfully Long Time

A long time ago, when days were longer and life was simpler, the three of us were inseparable. We were so much a part of each other that it was as if one could have done the breathing for all three, and if one of us hurt, all of us hurt. One’s fears were all of our fears, and one’s battles were all of our battles.

We would share secrets and dare dares, build forts and make believe. We would run wild down the streets, and spend summer nights under the stars making wishes, and falling asleep to the sounds of our own laughter.

We were best friends.

Then something happened, and somewhere along the way something changed. We grew up. Big wheels were traded for bikes, then for cars that we would use to drive us far away from the safety of the quiet street where we use to play.

In this new land that we found ourselves living in we were robbed of the simplicity that our innocence had granted us, and the magic of make believe slowly faded away leaving us with only foggy memories of days long since passed.

In our desperate attempts to grow up and fit in, for that was what we thought we were supposed to do, we changed and morphed, and molded ourselves into something else. We each became these new, taller, “adult” type people. People that didn’t build forts and that were too busy for star gazing. We became people that let more and more days go by before calling to check in, and people that didn’t always remember birthdays.

The more time that passed the harder it was to pick up a phone. Eventually we stopped missing each other. Eventually it seemed that the gap that we had allowed to grow between us was too great to venture across. Eventually our friendship, which at a time, a long time ago, had seemed so eternal, seemed to be nothing more than an old photo of three goofy gap toothed kids singing into a karaoke mic that I would pull out maybe once, or twice a year when I was feeling nostalgic.

These people who I at one point could not discern from myself, whose losses I mourned with every part of myself, and whose victories I celebrated so triumphantly as if they were my own, I no longer recognized. We’d become perfect strangers.

The other night I ran into one of my strangers. He’s grown now. No longer the gap toothed, big eared, child that would run bare foot on hot asphalt catching june bugs. I wasn’t expecting him. I’d been glancing at the crowd in the movie theatre and I saw him coming up the stairs. His eye caught mine at the same moment and there we froze, fixed, gazing at a face that neither had seen in some time, trying to place it to the sensation of familiarity that we were both experiencing. And then there it was, suddenly rolling over us, a wave of complete ecstatic joy.

It was one of those moments in life that happens very slowly for those involved, and very quickly for those witnessing it, for I am certain that the individuals I tripped over as I scrambled out the narrow theatre isle didn’t see me coming, but I felt as though it took me a lifetime to run to him. But then just like that I was in his arms, in the warm embrace of my best friend.

In that instant, I was right back where I had been over a decade ago. In that instant what were foggy memories and a dusty photograph became real again.

We don’t know who the either is anymore. We don’t know each other’s secrets, or even our favorite foods. In fact we don’t really know anything at all. He is a stranger to me, and I to him. But none of that matters. We both still know the child that we use to be, the person that we were before we became polluted by the burdens of growing up. We know the purest, best parts of each other, that have gotten lost, and that we no longer see in ourselves. But I can see it in him still, I look at him, at this handsome young man that he’s grown up to be, and I still can see that goofy gap toothed kid, and I still want to fight his battles and keep his secrets and build us a fort where we can fall asleep laughing, and dream about things that others would deem impossible.

And in that moment that we were together again, albeit brief, all of my previous notions about friendships being eternal were confirmed, and that no matter how much time may pass, we will always find our way back to one another, and we will always be seven years old at heart.

for starts

It’s funny. Nothing ever really works out the way you plan, or the way you’d like it to. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Sometimes people you think are good turn out to be bad. Sometimes things that you would swear are real, turn out to be make believe.

However, I will always stand by this; things have a way of working themselves out for the very best. Life has a way of surprising you, and with the right attitude, and a little bit of gumption, any bad situation can be turned on its head, and end up being the best thing that ever happened to you.

With every situation in life we are given the opportunity to learn and to grow. To rise above.

Every day I am amazed at the resilience that we as people are capable of in the face of tragedy or adversity.

I know a lot of people that think that they are lost. Whether they are willing to admit it or not, you can look at them and see it. They’re all searching for something.

People spend a lot of time searching, I think. They spend a lot of time playing parts, trying to find something that feels right. Trying to do what they think is right. Trying to be who they think they’re supposed to be. They’re looking for some kind of acceptance, or acknowledgement. They’re searching, and they think that they’re lost because they’re not finding anything. They come up empty handed. They feel disappointed, let down, and convince themselves that there is something else that they need to make them happy, some material something that they need to feel good. To be happy. To be better.

I think that we make our own happiness. I think that they’re searching for something that doesn’t exist because they’ve allowed themselves to be beaten down by their misfortune rather than finding pride in their strength in overcoming it.

A bad situation is sad. It’s unfortunate. But its one situation. Its one fleeting, passing, still sad, but temporary moment, in a series of innumerable moments that make up your life.

A bad attitude however, is far more tragic.

Make the conscious decision to be happy. Find your silver linings. They’re there. I promise. You don’t need anything else. We are all stronger than we give ourselves credit for. We are all capable of so much, we just get distracted searching for other solutions that we don’t see that we are able to create our own.